In 10 years as an editor covering the procurement world, I've attended my fair share of conferences and sat through hundreds of practitioner presentations. Many of these were basic and/or superficial, some downright dull, while others were simply unfathomable. But when listening to any CPO of a major company, the question in my mind was always this: "Can I imagine this guy (or this woman) sitting around a boardroom table engaging in an intelligent business conversation - not just a procurement one - with their CEO, CFO or other C-level executive AND walking out the door with their reputation enhanced?"
Sadly, in the majority of cases, well before the individual sat down again my answer was a resounding "No"! Perhaps it's unfair to judge people on the basis of a one-off performance like this, but then again how many chances do you get to impress a CEO these days? The problem was not simply a lack of charisma or leadership flair (though, by god, those things are in short supply in the upper echelons of the procurement community) but the feeling that they really weren't that tuned in (read "aligned") to the business agenda. To my mind, if a presenter can't explain clearly and simply at the outset why their internal colleagues give a fig about the project, initiative or programme they are about to describe, it's probably because they don't!
None of this would matter, of course, if procurement heads were happy just to do the stuff that procurement has always done - find suppliers, squeeze their prices, make them sign punitive contracts, and then shuffle purchase orders until it's time for the next deal. But that's not the case - most really believe they should be around that boardroom table on the basis that procurement's really, really important! Well, sorry, but that isn't enough - I recall one CEO telling me matter of factly that she didn't want her procurement director in the room if he was only capable of talking about procurement!
The upside of this state of affairs is that when I have been fortunate to hear a really smart and business-focused CPO give a presentation, I've not only woken up but also felt a kind of warm feeling inside. It's that sense of relief that comes from knowing that the next time somebody asks "What do you do?" at a social event, you can actually sound enthusiastic and proud, and perhaps even convince them that procurement is really quite interesting after all.
(Note: It doesn't always work - cue this conversation I once had with one of London's famous black cab drivers on my way home from an overseas conference:
Cabbie: What do you do then, guv'nor?
Me: I'm a business journalist.
Cabbie: What do you write about?
Me: It's called procurement.
Cabbie: What's that then?
Me: Well, my readers buy all the things that go into this cab you're driving - the engine, the steel, the seats, the electronics, and so on.
Cabbie: Christ, that sounds boring!)
On Tuesday at the Ariba Live event in London, I listened to a presentation from Jon Kirby, CPO of AstraZeneca, the British-Swedish pharmaceutical company. I first met Jon a couple of years ago when he held the same job at Barclays Bank - in fact, he took part in a roundtable on world-class procurement I chaired that, by coincidence, also included his predecessor at AZ, John Taylor (you can read the write-up here). It wasn't so much that he was pushing the boundaries, in terms of the function's reach and vision (although he did say that it was now embarking on a few supplier development programmes); it was more his dynamism and clear focus on meeting the changing business requirements of Big Pharma (ie, more cost orientated).
While contract renegotiation and demand management were two levers that could, and were, being pulled to reduce costs, Jon stressed that "most of our future savings" would come from what he termed "strategic change" - new suppliers and processes, outsourcing and offshoring, hedging, and so on. High-impact results in these areas could only be achieved if procurement and the rest of the business worked together hand in hand. "It's not a procurement initiative, it's a business initiative," he said.
This, I'll admit, didn't excite me in the way that collaborative supplier relationship management and the innovation agenda does (see my previous post), but at least I could picture Jon around that boardroom table, holding his own and contributing to the wider discussion. That's not something, unfortunately, I can say about too many CPOs.
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